More Dark Money Enters Iowa Politics: The High Cost of Drugs

November 6, 2015 By Steve C. Sherman

The National Coalition on Health Care and the Campaign for Sustainable Drug Pricing sound innocuous enough. A coalition sounds great…probably just some Doctors working together for a common goal. No, not so much, more like a huge Super Pac cloaked in a non-profit. Members include such lovable entities as the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, League of Women Voters, AARP, NAACP, and companies like Verizon and CVS. For a full list click here. I bet there get-togethers are awesome!

How about the Campaign for Sustainable Drug Pricing. Sounds reasonable, if you could glean anything from the title, but you can’t that’s the point. Sustainable drug pricing is a market tested way to say Government Controlled.

These two incestuous groups have a common goal. Government controlled health care top-to-bottom. Obamacare was just the start. The other thing they have in common is John Rother. Who in the world is John Rother? Well, he is the Executive Director of Campaign for Sustainable Drug Pricing and he is CEO/President of the National Coalition on Health Care. John has been around the block. He helped Hilz write the not so beloved Hillary Care in the 90’s, good times. He was an AARP Policy man for a while. He purports himself as a man out to help the average American, sort of like a well-loved grandpa, just looking out for his grandkids. He is more like socialist bad grandpa with a vision of single payer and controlled prices dancing in his head.

Well, Iowans can enjoy the first in the nation status by welcoming bad grandpa to Iowa. John Rother and his campaign, is spending more than $100,000 in what is called “dark money” in Iowa, South Carolina, etc. to sway voters. Last Thursday, the Campaign for Sustainable Drug Pricing (CSDP) held a Conversation With Iowa Voters event on the Drake campus. I’m sure the conversation went something like this. Vote for Bernie, and if not Bernie, Hillary will do! Followed with…all of the Republicans want to take away Grandma’s drugs and kill children with the price of drugs. Oh…fun. They might have had a few good chants against Big Pharma as well, who doesn’t hate Big Pharma? Low hanging fruit right there.

Let’s boil this down. I’ve written a lot about the sick price of drugs and the nasty bedfellows that Big Pharma and Government make. The misuse of patent law, the use of government power and collusion to protect Big Pharma, and on and on. So we can agree drug prices are too high, but that is where the common ground stops. I believe that if the free market were unfettered from government overreach we would see the marketplace be forced to not only lower prices but streamline their businesses and research more to remain cutting edge. It’s the bedrock of capitalism and it still works…the key is the unfettered part.

John Rother loves government. He sees all answers to our problems by creating more government. Even when those problems may have been created by too much government collusion in the first place. The CSDP believes passionately that government must control the drug prices. The government in the end must control everything about your life. Rather than forcing Big Pharma companies to compete, he’d rather allow their unholy alliance with government to remain and at the same time use a different arm of government to force them into a sustainable price scam. I guarantee the only thing sustainable about this sort of a set up will be the sick profits he rails against and even more of the derided smoky-back-room-deal.

I don’t know if John Rother is a mindless pawn. A simple front man for the powerful forces behind him (read the list of sponsors again) or if he is part of the driving force of this latest scheme to build even a more elaborate web of corruption in the name of helping out us common folk. Either way you can trust him to push for price controls and a single payer health care system. Even a cursory attempt at research shows you the true colors of John Rother and the groups he heads up.

In addition to the money being spent on events like the one just held in Des Moines and on advertising, supporters are being sent to campaign events to simply facilitate the conversation. Right. So, if you find yourself at a campaign event and someone stands up and asks, what do you plan to do about the high cost of drugs? It could be a simple question from a concerned citizen, but it may be one of John Rother’s minions at work. Either way, listen to the answer from your candidate…are they for free market solutions or are they in bed with the government way. The answers will be telling.